Author, Musician, Researcher, Educator, Exiled Brooklynite

QUALS ASSIGNMENT

2005.04.13

here's the final draft of my fourth and final essay. this was really tough -- the question is lifted more or less verbatim from a rambling email i sent larry a few weeks ago. by using it in this context, he was essentially asking me to put my money where my mouth was. it's hardly great work, but i think i did a pretty good job for two days' work...

Adorno and Thomas Frank
worry about the commercial increasingly impinging on the space of the public
sphere. The music industry increasingly
worries about their commercial music being treated as a public good (p2p, etc). Maybe a bigger framework would suggest not that either is impinging on
the other, but that the categories are becoming less relevant. After all, commerce is simply a specialized
form of social interaction. If we
believe Bourdieu that there are other forms of capital (social, cultural), then
we can understand new communication media and the resulting social practices as
forming the foundation for a society in which every kind of capital is
transacted like commodities -- or vice versa, where commodities are
undifferentiated from other forms of social relations. How would such a development, or way of
thinking, relate to traditional ways of thinking about the arts [traditional at
least in the West since the 18th century or so]? Discuss.

There is an old
television commercial for Reese’s Peanut Butter cups that has reached such a
level of cultural notoriety (at least among people in my age cohort) that it
has become something of an archetype, a kind of shorthand for an entire
cultural process. It goes something like this: Two upper crusty types are at
the opera, sharing a booth. One of them is eating a candy bar, and the other is
(improbably) holding an open jar of peanut butter. Somehow, they collide, and
the candy bar lands in the peanut butter, much to the dismay of both men.

“Hey!”
one of the men shouts, visibly enraged. “You got your chocolate in my peanut
butter!”

“You
got your peanut butter on my chocolate!” the other ripostes with venom.

At
this point, the two return to eating, and discover to their mutual delight that
the peanut butter-chocolate combination is infinitely more appetizing than
either ingredient was on its own. Peanut butter and chocolate are “two great
tastes that taste great together,” the voice-over tells us as we watch the
former rival combatants enjoying the fruits of their combined resources with an
air of zealous bonhomie.

I
relate this episode not just to pad my page count, but also to introduce a
metaphor that may be useful in considering the situation under examination in
this essay. Two rival positions have been staked out, each bitterly proclaiming
the sanctity of its resources. On the peanut butter side, cultural purists of
one stripe or another complain about the encroachment of commercialism into the
worlds of discourse and aesthetics. On the chocolate side, commercial interests
– especially the entertainment industry – are concerned that peer-to-peer file
sharing and other forms of “infringement” increasingly threaten to turn their
“intellectual property” into an unrestricted, unremunerative public resource.
Perhaps, as the candy bar commercial would suggest, the collision between these
seemingly irreconcilable factions represents an inevitable and desirable
form of cultural alchemy that will ultimately produce something greater than
the sum of its parts.

Commercialism
has been cast as the villain in so many critiques of industrial and post-industrial
society that it has practically become a given. Adorno and Horkheimer (1972)
are among earliest and most vocal in this camp, arguing that the “absolute
power of capitalism” (p. 120) has warped modern Western culture through a
process of mass production that standardizes aesthetic practices and products
and transforms the body politic into a brainwashed mass of infantilized
consumers. In the course of this process, they argue, the pure artistic
expression of “truth” has been replaced with popular culture’s logic of
“style,” which exists only to manufacture and channel demand among the
“deceived masses” (p. 133) for the latest commercial products.

Although
cultural studies theorists have developed their models beyond Adorno and
Horkheimer’s (1972) “Frankfurt School,” the threat of commercialism continues
to loom large in much of the literature. Barthes (1977), whose analytical
framework departs in many important respects from Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s (a
comparison I explore more thoroughly in my essay on musicology), shares their
apprehension at the cultural power of the marketplace. He laments that “the
‘truth’ of language” (p. 184) is being expunged by the proliferation of
soulless, institutionalized forms of expression. This process, he argues, takes
place through a commercial mechanism, which he calls “censorship by
repletion” (p. 185), in which the market is flooded with so much of the bad
stuff that the good stuff can’t survive.

Habermas
(1962), another foundational social theorist who departs radically in many ways
from Adorno and Horkheimer (1972), nonetheless shares their wariness of the
cultural influence of commercial forces. Habermas’ vision of society is
characterized by the “public sphere,” an institution in which private individuals
join together as a public to discuss, debate and strategize about matters of
collective import – primarily subjects of a political or economic nature. This
public scrutiny of the state operates as an analog and a countermeasure to the
government’s official legislative functions; no representative democracy can
function without one.

Habermas
(1962) acknowledges that capitalism played a vital role in the rise of the
public sphere – offering individuals an opportunity to transact and exercise
power independently of the state power apparatus. If the public sphere is
founded on a modernist notion of individual rights and free control of
productive property, these ideas in turn owe their existence to the rise of the
bourgeoisie and to the emergence of the capitalist ethos. Yet Habermas also
associates commercialism with the degradation of the public sphere. The rise of
consumerism, he argues, has spurred a general loss of interest in political
discourse and transformed the public sphere from an arena of debate into an
arena of marketing and advertising. Thus, like Adorno and Horkheimer (1972) and
Barthes (1977), Habermas laments that “truth” has taken a backseat to the
cultural dictates of the marketplace.

More
recent scholars have echoed these concerns. Paddison (1982), in his critique of
the Frankfurt School, takes issue with Adorno’s (2002) conflation of “serious
music” with honesty and “popular music” with corruption. Yet he concedes that
“increasingly sophisticated mechanisms of marketing and distribution make it
ever more difficult for any music – whether serious or popular,
traditional or avant-garde, Western or non-Western – to resist its fate as a
commodity” (p. 217).

Wicke (1982) sums
up the concerns of many social critics and scholars (cf. Peterson and Berger,
1975; 1996) when he voices concern that this commodification of music will lead
to aesthetic homogeneity. “As a form of social practice,” he argues:

music always bears the stamp of the social nature and the
concrete organisational structure of the relationships through which it is
produced, distributed and assimilated. If these relationships carry the stigma
of exchange-value characteristics, then this carries with it a growing tendency
towards homogenisation on the part of the perceptual, concrete aesthetic
character of the musical sound-shape. (p. 225)

In a similar, if more extreme, vein
Lasn (1999) equates consumerism with a religious cult, and complains that
“culture isn’t created from the bottom up by the people anymore – it’s fed to
us top-down by corporations” (p. 189).

Frank (1997a; b; c) offers an analysis that
is a bit more sophisticated than Lasn’s (1999), but eventually arrives at
similar conclusions. He acknowledges that commercial messages have increasingly
impinged on the public sphere, and that commercial aesthetics have become
increasingly culturally dominant. Yet he suggests that “what’s happened is not
co-optation or appropriation, but a simple and direct confluence of interest”
(1997b, p. 44) between corporate interests and counterculture. Frank
demonstrates this point by examining the ways in which the 1960s counterculture
aesthetic helped to reorganize the operating principles of the advertising
industry, yet was itself largely a product of that industry. He calls this legacy
of institutionalized counterculture “a commercial template for our times”
(1997c, p. 235). However, Frank does not equate this “confluence of interest”
between advertisers and the counterculture with “public interest” in any
generally accepted sense of the term. To the contrary, he argues that a “basic
concern” facing contemporary society is “the power of each person to make his
own life without the droning dictation of business interests” (1997a, p. 158).

I
could append a nearly infinite number of additional examples, but at some point
the law of diminishing returns would set in (if it hasn’t already). The point
is clear: there is a prominent and enduring trend of anti-commercial rhetoric
in social theory from the early part of the 20th century to the present
day. Despite diverse and often conflicting philosophies, these theorists remain
remarkably consistent on one point: culture (aesthetic expression, the public
sphere) is a space of Truth and Honesty, and commercial interests have sullied
it (warped it, transformed it, appropriated it) with Falsehoods for the purpose
of making money. In other words, the cultural peanut butter is tainted with the
flavor of commercial chocolate.

Miles
away (in terms of scholarly geography) are arrayed a group of commercial
interests making set of arguments about “intellectual property” that, at first
glance, would seem to be largely unrelated to the arguments of the social
theorists discussed above. As Vaidhyanathan (2001) relates, intellectual
property is a fairly recent invention. The category is an amalgam of disparate
legal ideas such as copyright, trademark, and patent – ideas originating with
the Enlightenment-era notion that financial compensation is an effective
incentive encouraging people to share their ideas with one another in a free
society. As Vaidhyanathan and Lessig (2004) discuss extensively, the scope of
these legal categories has expanded gradually over the years – at the behest of
corporate lobbyists – to equate the fruits of intellectual labor with material
property.

As
a result of this gradual enclosure of thought and expression, Lessig (2004)
argues, a greater portion of what we typically call “culture” is now owned and
controlled by commercial interests than at any point in the history of
humankind. While Lessig and Vaidhyanathan (2001) are inclined to view this as a
negative development with dire consequences for the future of public (and even
private) expression, there is another point of view that strong intellectual
property laws are necessary in this day and age.

Proponents
of expanding intellectual property controls – many (but not all) of them
representatives of corporate interests – argue that the major organs of public
culture, such as television, movies, the news media and the commercial music
industry, could never exist without the legal ownership of ideas. The argument
runs something like this: as the tools of expression increase in complexity
(e.g. from pen and paper to cameras and broadcasting towers), so does the cost
to operate them. This, in turn, requires an increase in the revenues associated
with such expression, and thus entails an increase in the associated financial
risk as well. Movie studios, record labels, and other such organizations exist
in order to organize the capital and take on the financial risk associated with
creative expression in the industrial age because creative individuals, for the
most part, cannot. And even these organizations would never make the initial
investment it takes to catalyze the process if they didn’t have some form of
assurance that revenues would eventually be forthcoming. Intellectual property
– the legal right to prevent people from accessing such ideas and expressions
without permission in exchange for payment – is exactly the assurance they seek.

The
above description is obviously a major oversimplification, and the details of
the argument change depending on which individuals, organizations or species of
creative expression are involved. Yet the basic premise – intellectual property
as a form of protection for free expression– remains consistent.
Clearly, this argument relies heavily on the original logic behind patent,
trademark and copyright – namely, that creative expression can be motivated
through financial means. However, in practice, the exercise of intellectual
property law often seems more like corporate protection from consumers.
I will briefly cite two examples to demonstrate my point: legal action against
trademark violation and legal action against peer-to-peer file sharing.

As
Bollier (2005) convincingly argues, trademarked language and symbols like the
names of companies, products, and celebrities have become part of our cultural lingua
franca in the media age. It would be difficult to pass a full day in the
company of one’s friends and family without uttering the name of some
trademarked entity – whether the title of a movie, the name of a store, or even
a brand of food or clothing. “Taken as a whole,” Bollier writes, “such symbols
comprise a cultural currency; they help us communicate in succinct, widely
understood ways” (p. 82). Consequently, he argues, when trademark law is used
to exert complete control over the use of these terms in public discourse, the
net effect is the “absolute control over the flow of symbols in our society”
(p. 82).

Bollier
(2005) catalogs several recent instances in which trademark law has been used
in exactly this way. In 1997, Mattel sued the band Aqua and their record label
after they released a song called “Barbie Girl” riffing ironically on the Barbie
doll’s girlish image and womanly proportions. In this suit, unlike many other
similar ones waged by the company, the defendant prevailed. In 1991, the film
studio MGM-Pathé successfully sued to prevent a neighborhood patrol group on
the lookout for gay-bashers in New York’s West Village from calling itself the
Pink Panthers. To this day, McDonald’s routinely threatens legal action against
people and organizations using its trademarked phrases, which include such
common and/or innocuous phrases as “Immunize for Healthy Lives,” “Fun Always,”
and “Hey, It Could Happen.” In each of these cases, the trademark owner has
sought legal recourse to protect unauthorized individuals from using their
legally protected language in an unsanctioned context.

Parallel
arguments have been made by media and entertainment companies seeking to
exercise copyright control over the distribution of files online via
peer-to-peer file sharing services, which allow millions of people
simultaneously to exchange digitized files like songs, movies, or pictures.

These services
unquestionably represent a challenge to the traditional ways in which the
entertainment industry does business. When recorded media was “stuck” to
physical objects like CDs and cassette tapes, it possessed two qualities that
economists refer to as rivalry (meaning only one person or group can use a
resource at a time) and excludability (meaning that a person or group can be
prevented from accessing a resource). According to standard economic theory,
resources that are both rival and excludable fall under the category of
“private goods,” best treated as property and exploited through the market
system. However, as soon as music became decoupled from its physical delivery
mechanisms, it ceased to be either rival or excludable, recategorizing it as a
“public good.” Public goods are notoriously difficult to profit from via
traditional market practices; rather, they tend to be managed by governmental
or non-profit entities (Johnson, 2000).

Rather than
reacting to this challenge by changing the nature of its goods so they would
once again be rival and excludible (e.g. by offering songs or movies within the
context of an integrated service with various software-driven bells and
whistles or agreeing on an industry-wide standard for secure high-definition
discs), the entertainment industry’s first response was to use copyright law in
a fruitless attempt to curtail online file sharing. In addition to suing the
manufacturers and proprietors of peer-to-peer software, this also meant suing
their own consumers. By the end of 2004, nearly 7,000 music fans had been
targeted by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in
file-sharing lawsuits, and nearly all of them had been forced to pay thousands
of dollars in settlement fees (McGuire, 2004).

In short,
organizations that use intellectual property to profit from the control of
creative expression have been simultaneously working to expand the scope of
intellectual property protections and pursuing legal means to prevent individuals
from recirculating their brands, phrases and creative works freely in the
public arena. In an age of increasing technological mediation and increasingly
decentralized information distribution, these organizations would argue,
draconian legal action has emerged as the only viable means to prevent the
public from stealing their property and redistributing it publicly. To
invoke my guiding metaphor yet again, these companies are concerned about their
intellectual chocolate being swallowed whole in the public peanut butter.

Thus, to recap: on
the one side, we have cultural watchdogs bemoaning the commercialization of
public discourse. On the other, we have industry watchdogs bemoaning the
cultural appropriation of private intellectual property. Perhaps these two
trends are related – are, in fact, simply flip sides of a larger trend. Perhaps
the dividing lines between cultural and commercial exchange are eroding, and a
new paradigm – a social discursive peanut butter cup – is emerging to take
their places.

Many of today’s
broadest social thinkers certainly suggest that this may be the case. Giddens
(1990), for example, argues that “today, ‘money proper’ is independent of the
means whereby it is represented, taking the form of pure information” (p. 25).
Similarly, Castells (2000) speaks of the emerging global communications network
as engendering a “space of flows” (p. 408) in which information, capital,
technology, organizations, and symbols swirl among the nodes and hubs
represented by individuals, institutions and places. Bell (1999) speaks of the
shift from financial to human capital as one of the definitive aspects of
post-industrial society. In his model, knowledge has replaced labor as the
cornerstone of the global economy – in other words, industry is now constituted
by the act of sharing ideas.

Cultural theorists
suggest a move in this direction as well. Bourdieu (1984) considers money to be
only one form of capital, alongside “cultural capital,” “educational capital”
and “social capital.” Each of these is transacted in different ways, he argues,
and each plays a vital role in establishing an individual’s social rank and
power. The idea of cultural capital has gained widespread acceptance throughout
cultural studies literature, appearing without needing to be defined in the
work of authors such as Hall (1996), Frith (1996), Gendron (2002),
Bernard-Donals (1994), and Thornton (1996). Bollier (2005) makes the
culture-commerce connection even more explicit; above, I quoted him referring
to corporate trademarks a form of “cultural currency” (p. 82). Similarly, the
idea of social capital has been taken up by sociologists and network theorists
(Monge & Contractor, 2003), who have in recent years begun to devise ways
of measuring social capital based on the structure of an individual’s
relationships with others in a social network.

Thus,
it could be argued that these scholars are converging, each from his or her own
theoretical and methodological perspective, on a single point: In a
networked, post-industrial age, commerce has ceased to represent a unique form
of information exchange. Every aspect of human communication, from simple
conversations to creative expression to the exchange of goods and services, has
become intermeshed in a web of interdependency, creating a common meta-language
of networked exchange. This meta-language retains some aspects of commerce
(e.g. quantifiability) and some aspects of cultural expression (e.g.
identity-construction). For the sake of brevity (and to exercise the
prerogative of coinage that secretly motivates every social theorist), I will
call this meta-language the “lingua textura,” meaning the “language of
the web.”

Clearly,
the emergence of the lingua textura has implications for every aspect of
human society, beyond simply the collision of culture and commerce. It has
profound consequences, for example, in the realm of aesthetic theory, which has
since Kant’s time been dominated by the definition of art as inherently
non-functional symbolic expression. As Gross (1995) relates, the Western
artistic tradition has for the past three centuries been dominated by the
notion that art is necessarily innovative and unique, and is the product of a
creative individual endowed with the quality of artistic genius. This paradigm,
which defines art in terms of its irrelevance to daily life, has the effect of
banishing arts and artists to a cultural “reservation” (p. 3), a form of limbo
that, like religion and its practitioners, is viewed by the quotidian world
with a combination of reverence and contempt.

This
separation of art and life, Gross (1995) argues, has been enforced and
reflected in pedagogical and other institutional traditions. Our culture, Gross
and Blacking (1974) argue, doesn’t nourish aesthetic symbolic competency the
way it does linguistic competency. Our innate musical talents, for example, are
not developed in any meaningful way through institutionalized cultural
practices, the way speech and even literacy are. Similarly, I would add that,
by banishing art to the realm of the non-functional, it is distinguished from
and compared poorly to the commercial sphere, which is commonly seen as “the
real world,” and emphasized accordingly in the education of our young.

However,
this Romantic “art-for-art’s-sake” model of aesthetic production doesn’t stand
any more of a chance of surviving in the age of the lingua textura than
do the notion of culture and commerce as separate and inviolable spheres of
human intercourse. If there is no clear dividing line between aesthetic,
political and commercial symbolic lexicons, grammars, and sites of interaction,
then there can be no clear dividing line between species of communicants, or
between the messages they send.

This
erosion of boundaries is clearly at work in the so-called “postmodern” rupture
that has characterized art worlds in recent decades. In the world of music, for
instance, Kramer (2002) argues that postmodern work is structurally
inconsistent, intertextual, referential, appropriative, transcendent of social
hierarchies, and transparently related to the production technologies that are
used in its creation. Similarly, Taylor (2002) argues that postmodernism in
music is not a compositional ethic, but a mode of presentation and marketing
that surrounds music making.

These are all
qualities that point to the shift of creative expression from a self-contained,
specialized aesthetic language to a lingua textura capable of
simultaneously serving diverse communicative and transactive purposes. In
Taylor’s (2002) words, “aspects of [postmodern] musical style cannot be
dissociated from other factors surrounding the composition, dissemination, and
reception of a work, and these other factors contribute to the sound of
postmodern musics” (p. 103). That is to say, the interpenetration of aesthetics,
technology and commerce is complete.

This
shift has not just taken place in the rarefied world of academic, or “serious”
music, but also in the world of popular music. Gracyk (1996) argues that rock
was the first musical form to emphasize the recording over live
performance as the definitive objet d’art. However, such a development
undermines the very notion of a definitive objet d’art, tangling the
creative expressive act in a web of technology and commerce. This is why Gracyk
argues that “it makes little sense to judge rock from the standpoint of
noncommercial or anticommercial criteria” (p. 185).

Other,
more recent popular music styles such as dub reggae (Hebdige, 1987), hip-hop
(Rose, 1994) and mash-ups (Sinnreich, 2004) embrace their discursive
entanglement even more directly, using the tools of sampling, scratching,
dubbing and versioning to create art works that are in many respects constituted
of other forms of communication and other sounds of human activity (e.g.
speech, industrial noise, commercial jingles).

Like the other new
forms of cultural discourse enabled by the lingua textura discussed
above, these new popular music styles have challenged the idea of
intellectual property even as the legal category has grown in scope, strength
and ubiquity. The notion of musical copyright, for example, is based on the
traditional idea of an individual author, making a discrete work within the
sphere of the arts. If there is no such thing as an individual author, a
discrete work, or a separate sphere for artistic expression, then such
definitions cannot hold. Similarly, in Bollier’s (2005) words, “if the
justifications used by trademark law make sense in the context of the
marketplace, they make much less sense now that the marketplace has become
our culture” (p. 81, emphasis in original).

Yet, for my
Reese’s peanut butter cup metaphor to hold together, the clash of these
formerly disparate worlds would have to create something bigger and better than
the sum of its parts, a newly emergent reality with internal cohesion, in which
“two great tastes” would truly “taste great together.” This means that, if the lingua
textura has indeed become our new cultural foundation, we have to find ways
to accommodate the multiplicity of voices speaking this language, and the
multiplicity of needs they communicate.

People need to be
able to express themselves freely to one another secure in the knowledge that
they won’t be served with subpoenas or heavy fines. Institutions must be able
to organize capital and other resources for the purpose of cultural transaction
secure in the knowledge that remuneration will come in one form or another. In
short, a new set of laws, practices and cultural norms must emerge to
accommodate these sweeping changes. That I, as a scholar, would even think to
use a candy bar commercial as the metaphorical framework for a serious academic
essay shows how much discourse has changed. The extent to which I am able to
get away with it will be one small indication of how ready we are for these changes.

2005.04.11

here's the final draft of my answer to the third essay question of my qualifying exams:

In Roland Barthes’ Image-Music-Text, he argues that “under the pressure of the mass
long-playing record, there seems to be a flattening out of technique.” (189) Explain what Barthes means by “flattening out of technique.” Is he repeating Adorno’s critique of mass
produced music, or is there room in Barthes’ cosmology for music that is
produced in a standardized fashion but that nonetheless contains the potential
for meaning? Finally, is Barthes
right?: given home studios and the democratization of music making, can we
really speak of a flattening out of technique?

In order to get to the point where we can assess the
meaning, let alone the veracity, of Barthes’ quote, it will be necessary to
frame it within the context of the essay it’s drawn from, ‘The Grain of the
Voice,’ written in 1972. This essay is in itself a study in contradictions:
brief and concise but theoretically complex; forthright and passionate but
analytical and ruminative; explicitly conscious of language’s incapacity to
encompass musical experience, yet adamant in its desire to accomplish exactly
that task. In sum, Roland Barthes at his finest and most vexing.

The “grain”
Barthes refers to in the title of the essay is a term he uses to describe what
he feels is most honest, passionate, and empathetic in musical performance.
This quality achieves (or is achieved by) an almost mystical union between the
body of the musical performer and the body of the listener, united by some
common foundation in the deepest roots of language and culture. He
appreciatively describes a Russian bass, for example, as having a voice that is
“brought into your ears in one and the same movement from deep down in the
cavities, the muscles, the membranes, the cartilages, and from deep down in the
Slavonic language, as though a single skin lined the inner flesh of the
performer and the music he sings” (pp. 181-2).

For me as a reader
and music lover, this description brings to mind an ineffable quality which I
detect in vocalists whose work I enjoy, but find absent in most popular singers
from any era. Why should it be that I believe the catch in Anita O’Day’s
voice but not in Diana Krall’s? Or the melisma of Chaka Khan but not that of
Lauryn Hill? Or, to follow Barthes’ lead in extending the metaphor of the grain
from vocal performance to instrumental, the guitar pyrotechnics of Jimi Hendrix
but not those of Jeff Beck?

Bourdieu (1984)
would argue that such distinctions are simply a matter of classist hierarchies
predefining my cultural preferences. Cultural studies theorists from the
Birmingham school of audience reception, such as Hall (Morley & Chen, 1996)
and Hebdige (1979; 1987), would also argue that my judgments are subjective and
have more to do with my sense of identity and my subcultural context than with
any objective quality of the music per se. But there is something innately
appealing, something that matches my experience as a music listener and
practitioner, in Barthes’ insistence that honesty – and its absence – can be
heard.

It is important to
emphasize here that, for Barthes, the musical performance is not simply a
frozen artifact whose level of grain-ness can be objectively determined by some
system of measurement. To the contrary, Barthes makes it clear that he is not
interested in codifying value judgments as Adorno (2002) does (I will continue
this comparison later in the essay). He rather elegantly side-steps this
conundrum by arguing that the grain is simply an extended hook, an opportunity
to connect, but that real and complete musical expression exists only in a
direct somatic and even “erotic” (p. 188) relationship between player and
listener. In other words, it’s not so much that Anita O’Day is good and
Diana Krall is bad, it’s that I perceive in the former a chance to
connect that is absent in the latter, and enact that connection through engaged
listening.

This still leaves the rather thorny question of whether
some singers offer more grain – more of a hook – than others. Despite his
unwillingness to deal in absolutes, Barthes suggests this is the case. Again
elegantly side-stepping the question of value, he accomplishes this with the
help of an analytical framework borrowed from Julia Kristeva, drawing a
distinction between the “geno-song” and the “pheno-song.”

In this dichotomy, the geno-song represents “the
space where significations germinate ‘from within the language and in its very
materiality’ . . . that apex (or that depth) of production where melody
explores how the language works and identifies with that work” (p. 182). In
other words, the geno-song is reflexively critical of its own codes and media
and therefore, through its honesty and subtlety, has the capacity to produce jouissance
(orgasmic aesthetic pleasure) in the listener.

The pheno-song, by contrast, represents “everything
in the performance which is in the service of communication, representation,
expression . . . everything which it is customary to talk about, which forms
the tissues of cultural values” (p. 182). In other words, the pheno-song is the
sonic enactment of musico-social semiotics, as when a wailing electric guitar
signifies the “rockness” of a pop song but little else, or when tastefully
edited sounds of vinyl scratching punctuate an otherwise instrumental backing
track to give a song a patina of “urban” grit. There is no opportunity for jouissance
in the pheno-song, Barthes argues, only the passionless reaffirmation of existing
cultural norms and expectations.

Viewed from this perspective, a performance with
grain is simply one in which the performer (and the listener?) emphasize the
geno-song over the pheno-song. But why should this matter, and what does it
have to do with long-playing records or the “flattening” of technique? The
answers are merely suggested by Barthes, never stated outright. The grain of
the voice, he offers, can “hold in check the attempts at expressive
reduction operated by a whole culture against the poem and its melody” (p.
184, emphasis in original). This oblique comment suggests that Barthes believes
in an ongoing social dialectic in which people desiring to express themselves
to one another – to communicate and achieve jouissance – are being intentionally
prevented through a policy of control over aesthetic expression.

As a result of this social-aesthetic imposition,
Barthes feels that people’s control over their own culture (and the quality of
their emotional lives) is being lost and abdicated to commercial and political
interests, that “the ‘truth’ of language” (p. 184), expressed through the grain
of the voice, is ever less evident in popular cultural forms. This is a theme
he explores in ‘Musica Practica’ (published 1970, same volume) as well, in which
he bemoans the growing gap between music producers and consumers, embodied in a
commercialized aesthetic passivity that “relieves the listener of all activity,
even by procuration, and abolishes in the sphere of music the very notion of doing.”
(p. 150).

This dialectic is very similar in some ways to the
one described by Adorno (2002) in his anti-popular music screed ‘On Popular
Music’ (published 1941). In this essay, Adorno applies his and Horkheimer’s
larger critique of the “culture industry” to music in particular. According to
Adorno, the process of mass production necessarily produces a popular
music aesthetic that mimics the repetitiveness, standardization, and
soullessness of the industry that formed it, and its listeners are necessarily
duped and brainwashed into an infantilized state of helplessness. Given this
process, Adorno’s alarm over such music’s potential role in clearing the way
for fascist politics to emerge in the West is completely understandable.

Although Barthes, like Adorno (2002), is concerned
about the aesthetic passivity inherent in mass produced music, and its
potential to undermine the cultural and political power of the masses who
consume it, his model differs in some significant ways. Adorno is a structural
determinist – in his conception, industrial and aesthetic logics overlap
completely and with total isomorphic causality. Barthes allows a bit more
wiggle room, more room for agency. Structural forces cannot directly account
for the processes he describes, nor can simple technological change. He isn’t
suggesting that the “flattening out of technique” (read: the rise of the
pheno-song) is a direct byproduct of advances in recording technology, or of
any given system of labor-capital relations. In fact, the only mechanism he ever
suggests for the dominance of the passive aesthetic and waning of the grain in
popular music is one of “censorship by repletion” (p. 185) in which the market
is flooded with so much pheno-song that it squeezes out the geno-song
aesthetic.

Yet there is also something sinister about Barthes’
model that is lacking from Adorno’s (2002). For Adorno, industrialization and
class warfare go hand-in-hand; the dominant classes necessarily inculcate a
culture of passivity among the lower classes because that’s how the system
works. For Barthes, the absence of a direct causal mechanism suggests
intentionality: the forces of consolidated power are attempting to “inoculate
pleasure” (p. 185) and eradicate jouissance by reducing aesthetic
experience to mere semiotic communication. This, in turn, represents an
institutionalization of opinion and a monopoly over meaning production (what
Barthes calls the “tyranny of meaning”, p. 185). The benefits of this process
to the consolidated political and commercial forces are a more predictable,
more manipulable mass of citizens/consumers. The costs to the (French) masses
are nothing less than the loss of music as “a space of pleasure, of thrill, a
site where language works for nothing” (p. 186).

Adorno (2002) and Barthes differ in other important
respects, as well. As I mentioned above, Adorno believes in the proposition
that there is “good” music and “bad” music, and that its possible to analyze
the difference between the two based solely on the formal qualities of the
music. He also believes that the good/bad music split maps directly onto the
generic distinction between “serious music” and “popular music.” Barthes,
however, eschews absolute value judgments and formalism for the more fluid and
ambiguous geno-song/pheno-song model, which takes the performance and the
listener into account, in addition to the formal structure of the music. And
far from drawing an inviolate line between art music and popular music, Barthes
explicitly allows for “mass ‘good’ music” (p. 187) – in other words, “serious
music” that succumbs to the deadening logic of the pheno-song – while admitting
that “some popular singers have a ‘grain’ while others, however famous, do not”
(p. 188).

Barthes’ willingness to discover a grain in the
voices of popular singers gives definitive proof that there is, in fact, room
within his cosmology for meaningful music produced by a standardized industrial
and technological apparatus. Furthermore, his enthusiastic response to
Panzera’s singing (the very epitome of the grain in the voice) despite (or
because of) his “artificial” (p. 184) vocal technique indicates a theoretical
willingness to hear the grain even through technological intermediation.

But is Barthes right? Does the geno-song/pheno-song
model make any sense? Is the grain in the voice truly on the wane, and, if so,
is it part of a deliberate strategy of social control and the eradication of
pleasure? There is no hope for me definitively to answer these questions in the
next few pages or hours, so I will review a few other related texts that bear
on the issue, and weigh in with my own take in the process.

Grossberg (1992) expands on one of Barthes’ core
assertions, arguing that conservative politicians’ calls during the 1980s and
early 1990s to regulate and censor rock music are part of a larger plan to
“constrain, police and even regulate . . . the production, distribution and
consumption of art and popular culture in the United States” (p. 9). The
political function of this movement, he argues, is the regulation of pleasure,
which in turn becomes an instrument of social control and the maintenance of a
given social order.

At the heart of such an argument is an assumption
about the power of aesthetic experience, and music in particular, that is very
similar to Barthes’. Grossberg (1992) believes it has the power to transform
“passive reception into active production [and is] the most powerful affective
agency in human life” (p. 153). Note how Grossberg’s thesis here presents a
mirror image of the arguments made by Barthes and Adorno (2002). The two
earlier theorists are primarily concerned that popular music will inculcate passivity among its listeners; Grossberg, on the other hand, extols its capacity
to produce activity.

I agree with Barthes and Grossberg (1992) that the
regulation of aesthetic expression serves an obvious political agenda – not
just in our society but throughout human culture. However, I believe that there
is more to be considered than simply music’s ability to produce pleasure in its
listeners or to moderate their level of activity/passivity. With Attali (1985),
I also believe that music has the capacity to change people’s ideas, to
express, amplify and alter the dominant social organizational paradigms of a
given place and time.

This potent combination of powers – social,
cognitive, and affective – makes music very similar to another cultural agent
whose use has historically been regulated by authoritarian social institutions:
namely, controlled substances. This is a metaphor I have found very useful to
explore in my own recent theorizations of music, and plan to use in my
dissertation (as this idea is both still inchoate and somewhat tangential to
the question at hand, I will avoid expanding on it here – but I would be happy
to discuss further during the oral component of this examination).

As to the flattening out of technique, there is
abundant academic literature attempting to assess whether the music in the
mainstream marketplace has become more aesthetically homogeneous or
heterogeneous as the structure of the music industry has changed – primarily
towards market concentration and vertical integration. Peterson and Berger
(1975) initiate the debate, analyzing Billboard chart data over a span
of 26 years and ultimately coming to the conclusion that consolidation has
produced a trend towards aesthetic homogeneity. Their findings are supported
and augmented in later work, such as Rothenbuhler and Dimmick (1982),
Christianen (1995) and DiCola and Thomson (2002), but refuted by scholars
including Lopes (1992), Alexander (1996) and Dowd (2004). For theoretical,
methodological, and ideological reasons, I tend to put more weight on the
arguments showing a connection between industry consolidation and aesthetic
homogeneity (although I am more sympathetic to Barthes’ tendential model than
to Adorno’s [2002] absolutist one). However, it is only reasonable, on
reviewing the literature, to concede that the question has yet to be answered
definitively.

As I wrote above, I am also very sympathetic to
Barthes’ geno-song/pheno-song model. While it is under-theorized (in his essay,
at least) and prone to all the standard pitfalls of theoretical models based on
strict binaries, I am intuitively attracted to it, because it matches my
experiences as a musician and my observations as a music theorist.

I have long dreamed of conducting some form of mass
audience research examining in depth the roles music plays in people’s lives
and the ways in which they understand it to operate. Music industry consumer
research I conducted as a market analyst consistently showed behavior, taste
and consumption habits could divide the total population in to rather neat,
discrete segments, often with very little crossover in either membership or
defining traits. However, the questions I asked were always instrumental (“Have
you downloaded a song from the Internet in the past three months?”) and
attitudinal (“Would you be willing to pay for x, y, or z?”),
offering only the slightest glimpse into my subjects’ inner lives. I have often
wondered: if we could take a measure of people’s musical souls, at the ways in
which they live in music, would we find neat, discrete segments? Are
there some people who simply thrill to the aesthetic experience, the geno-song,
while others hear only the cultural symbolism of the pheno-song?

Psychoacoustic research (Perrot & Gjerdigan, 1999) has shown
that most people can accurately predict whether they will like a song or not
after hearing it for as short a time as 250 milliseconds. Aucouturier and
Pachet (2003) argue that this means “humans can judge genre by using only an
immediately accessible ‘surface’” (p. 89). If this is the case, then clearly we
are all under the sway of the pheno-song, doomed to judge music for its
cultural connotations before we ever have the opportunity to experience it
aesthetically.

But this begs an important question: what’s wrong
with using music instrumentally for its cultural connotations? Is the geno-song
somehow more legitimate than the pheno-song? Suddenly, Barthes’ argument
strikes me as yet another bourgeois re-affirmation of the individualist,
art-for-art’s-sake philosophy decried by Benjamin (1968) and so many more
recent cultural theorists. If music is rooted in community and collectivity,
then the pheno-song has always played a role vital to society – one
inextricable from the function of the geno-song. Maybe devotees of the
geno-song (such as myself) are simply a bunch of cultural aphasics who can’t
see the forest for the trees.

I can’t resolve this dilemma in this essay because I
have yet to resolve it in my own mind. Clearly, both the geno-song and the
pheno-song – individual aesthetic expression and cultural convention – exist
for a reason, and probably could not exist independently of one another. If
this is the case, then the pheno-centric music industry and geno-centric snobs
of the academy are equally at fault for missing the point. And the mythical
“masses”, far from being cultural dupes or heroic freedom fighters, are the
only ones who really understand music because they live in it
non-ideologically, sometimes connecting with its emotive power, at other times
wearing it like a fashion accessory. I don’t know, this answer also seems a
little too pat. I am still struggling with it.

I realize I have now reached the end of this essay
without addressing the question of home studios and the democratization of
music-making, so I will attempt to treat this in brief. I share with Barthes
and Attali (1985) a sense of disappointment and apprehension at the historical
trend towards a division of labor between music producers and consumers. I love
making music, and I think the world would be a better place if more people had
access to the skill, perceived self-efficacy, and cultural institutions that
are necessary for music production. I believe that we are both strategically
(i.e. conservative censorship) and systematically (i.e. industrial capitalism)
discouraged from acquiring these resources, and also believe that people’s
innate need to express themselves, to communicate aesthetically, endures as a
latent source of resistance against these forces.

Thus, when a new technology for decentralized music
production (i.e. home studios) or distribution (i.e. peer-to-peer file sharing
networks) emerges, it is no surprise that this shift in the environment would
have a democratizing effect on musical practices. However, I am very hesitant
to start proclaiming full-scale revolution for a number of reasons. First, like
Barthes, I shy away from structural and technological determinism – in other words,
these changes are no more certain to liberate people than prior
conditions were certain to enslave them. Any macro-level effect is emergent and
tendential at best.

Second, I think that the dominant aesthetic of our
culture is still determined by the marketplace, and that this dynamic is
unlikely to change unless and until the decentralization of information flow or
other forces of change destabilize and re-order the flows of capital and power
in our society. Right now, no amount of grainy (in both senses of the word),
independently-produced music available on Grokster is going to dislodge the
hegemony of smooth, flat commercial music pumped into our aesthetic environment
by billions of dollars in marketing and promotion. And as long as this aesthetic
persists, so will the division-of-labor ethic it promotes, thus discouraging
people from forming musical community on any massive scale despite the
democratization of access to the means of production.

Finally, I am not confident that this
democratization is a meaningful, long-term trend. I mean this in two senses.
First, I don’t believe that the production and distribution of music has been
democratized in any absolute sense. Even the poorest, most
disenfranchised individuals have always have the capacity to sing to one
another. Rather, I see the rising availability of home studio technology as
something akin to technological escalation in an arms race. The music industry
considerably raised the bar for recorded music quality in the 1970s with the
invention of modern studio techniques and the compact disc (which,
incidentally, followed the last democratized music movement – i.e.
folk/rock in the 1960s). Now that modern studio equipment and CD-burners are
available cheaply and easily to consumers, the industry is feverishly exploring
other bar-raising options (such as high-definition, surround-sound discs and
new levels of studio wizardry embodied by “super-producers” such as the
Neptunes). I see no reason for this cycle to stop now.

Second, I am not at all convinced that the
technologies behind our current wave of democratization are here to stay. As I
have argued elsewhere (e.g. as an expert witness in a file-sharing lawsuit), I
have no doubt that the peer-to-peer genie is out of the box, and that no amount
of legal action can ever put it back in. However, a concerted effort by the
media and technology industries (itself no mean feat) could theoretically erect
several additional barriers to file sharing, fragmenting its user base. While
this would have very little effect on the availability of free Britney Spears
MP3s, it would force independent musicians looking for an avenue of
distribution to work exponentially harder to reach a large audience (a
conspiratorially-minded person could potentially conclude that this is, in
fact, one of the strategic purposes for industry action against P2P
communities), essentially forcing them back into the waiting arms of the
centralized, commercial music marketplace, and into the cultural logic of the
pheno-song.

2005.04.09

here's the final draft of essay # 2, network society and communication policy. i actually think it's pretty good, for 2 days worth of work...

Pick
three network theories which have relevance for communication policy, justifying
your selection. Briefly explicate the core assertions of the theories and
explain why you think they are interesting. Compare the implications of these
theories for selected communication policies. Do these policies take full
advantage of the theoretical insights? If not, what would be the benefits and
the drawbacks if current policies were changed to conform to the theories?

1. Evolutionary and
Coevolutionary Theories

The
first network theory I would like to explore in relationship to communication
policies is evolutionary and coevolutionary theory, elements of which have the
capacity to shed some light on ongoing debates over the use of the
electromagnetic spectrum by communication and media organizations. This is
because spectrum is often described as a scarce resource, and evolutionary
theory “emphasizes competition and cooperation among organizational populations
for scarce resources that exist in their mutual environments” (Monge &
Contractor, 2003).

Evolutionary
systems are based on three fundamental mechanisms: variation, selection and
retention. Variation refers to organizational change, either intentional or
unintentional. Selection refers to the process whereby some variations are
chosen over others. Retention refers to the process by which selected
variations become integral to the organizations that adopt them (Monge &
Contractor, 2003).

The
evolutionary processes described in the literature on organizational change has
been characterized by Baum (1996) as falling into three categories: demographic
processes (e.g. advantages accruing to larger and more tenured organizations),
ecological processes (e.g. niche width dynamics, population dynamics, density
dependence, and community interdependence), and environmental processes (e.g.
political upheaval, governmental regulation, and institutional linkages). As I
will discuss shortly, I believe that all three of these processes have
relevance to the question of spectrum regulation and allocation.

Coevolutionary
theory expands the understanding of these mechanisms and processes to encompass
multiple populations and niches. Coevolutionary processes describe a broad
range of interrelationships between different species of organization dependent
upon different types of resources in different environments. In the words of
Monge and Contractor (2003), “often organizations must compete, but under some
conditions organizations from different populations can also cooperate,
seeking mutually beneficial outcomes.” (p. 257). This is exactly the kind of
dynamic I feel to be at work in the alliances and divisions between
organizations in the current regulatory battles over spectrum policy.

The question of
how to allocate electromagnetic spectrum resources is vital to the growth and
success of organizations in the fields of media, communications, computing,
consumer electronics, and the military, to name a few. Although there are
theoretically an infinite number of frequencies along the spectrum, and even
though the same frequency can theoretically be used simultaneously for several
divergent purposes without conflicting, technological limitations have
historically mitigated the functionality of this resource, producing
“interference” when rival interests both wish to use a given range of
frequencies within a given geographical space. Thus, the conventional
understanding of the issue, “supported by over a century of technological
experience and 70 years of regulatory habit, views spectrum . . . as a scarce
resource that must be allocated by governments or bought and sold like
property” (Economist, 2004).

However, new
technologies, such as wideband, digital television and radio broadcasting
protocols, and mesh networking, have drastically increased the amount of
information that can successfully be transmitted via the electromagnetic
spectrum. In terms of evolutionary theory, the environmental “niche” defined by
the spectrum has exponentially increased its potential carrying capacity. Put
another way, the electromagnetic spectrum has ceased to represent a scarce
resource.

Although this
increase in carrying capacity would seem to represent a net benefit for
consumers and society in general, it poses a significant challenge to the
organizations that have historically benefited from oligarchical control over
the spectrum – namely, broadcasters and communications companies. Consequently,
industry lobbyists such as the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) have
consistently attempted (and often succeeded) to influence policy in such a way
that would prevent other organizations from taking advantage of the
electromagnetic spectrum’s new carrying capacity. Meanwhile, these other
organizations, dedicated to opening up the spectrum for competition and
innovation, have banded together to form their own lobbying entities. In the words
of one journalist who covers this market, “the battle over spectrum space has
been a lobbying game” (Clark, 2005).

This dynamic is
exemplary of the evolutionary process applied to organizations. As Monge and
Contractor (2003) explain, “forces, often random, introduce change; existing
practices, representing inertia, resist change. Evolution explores the
constant tension between these two pressures” (p. 247, italics in original). If
we return to Baum’s (1996) enumeration of the processes at work in evolutionary
theory, we can see that each of them is pertinent to the situation as well.
Demographic processes are at work in the competitive advantage (represented as
financial strength and successful lobbying) recognized by the older and larger
companies already inhabiting the spectrum niche. Ecological processes are also
at work; by attempting to delay the introduction of spectrum-enhancing
technologies through lobbying and stonewalling on technological standards
(McChesney, 2004), the established organizations are attempting to manipulate
the “niche width” and “density dependence” of their resources. Lastly,
environmental processes – government regulation and the effects of new
technologies – are the dominant forces influencing the success or failure of
the organizations occupying the spectrum niche.

The lobbying
efforts of the NAB and other such organizations can be further understood with
the aid of other aspects of evolutionary and coevolutionary theory as well.
From a neo-institutional perspective (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Monge &
Contractor, 2003), lobbying can be understood as a form of “coercive
isomorphism” in which organizations band together collectively to influence
their regulatory environment to their mutual advantage. Aldrich (1999) and Astley
and Fombrun (1983) would call this kind of collaboration “commensalism” – a
relationship between like organizations that make similar demands on the
environment.

Finally,
coevolutionary theory would view the collective action of the broadcasters –
from lobbying to technological stonewalling – as an example of an
organizational community, defined as “a set of coevolving organizational
populations joined by ties of commensalisms and symbiosis through their
orientation to a common technology, normative order, or legal-regulatory
regime” (Aldrich, 1999, p. 301; quoted in Monge & Contractor, 2003). Such
communities can serve as a “buffer” between member organizations and their
environment, thus regulating access to and use of resources.

Federal
communications policy relating to spectrum allocation has thus far been much
more responsive to the needs of the entrenched organizations than to the needs
of innovators and upstarts (to say nothing of consumers). However, there is
ample support for the argument that “any number of transmitters and receivers
can peacefully co-exist on the airwaves and that spectrum should therefore be
open to all – not individual property, but rather a commons” (Economist,
2004).

By paying more
attention to evolutionary and coevolutionary theories, regulatory bodies like
the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) may more easily recognize and
respond to the ways in which broadcasters are successfully manipulating their
environments to their own advantage, and to the disadvantage of competitors and
consumers. To draw a political argument from a theoretical one, I will close by
quoting Monge and Contractor (2003): “all the species relevant to a specific
niche must be considered in an analysis of any niche and its carrying
capacity” (p. 252, italics added).

2. Structural Holes

Another
network theory that has many implications for communication policy is Burt’s
(1992; 1997) theory of structural holes. A structural hole is a “relationship
of nonredundancy between two contacts” (Burt, 1992, p. 18) in a network, with
redundancy measured both in terms of cohesion (direct connection from one node
to another) and in terms of structural equivalence (similar or overlapping sets
of relationships between two nodes).

Structural
holes, according to Burt (1992; 1997), are important indicators and mechanisms
of social capital within a network. Social capital is defined as “relationships
with other players” that offer “opportunities to use . . . financial and human
capital” (Burt, 1992, pp. 8-9). In other words, a network of relationships
enables people to invest financial and human capital (e.g., talent) in order to
acquire personal profit. The structural hole is the most valuable feature of
such a network, because it represents “an opportunity to broker the flow of
information between people and control the form of projects that bring together
people from opposite sides of the hole” (Burt, 1997, p. 340).

Entrepreneurs
who take advantage of the investment opportunities offered by structural holes
are referred to as brokers or, in the words of Simmel (1923), as the tertius gaudens (literally, “the third
who benefits”). Burt (1992; 1997; 1998; 2002) and others (Ahuja, 2000; Hargadon
& Sutton, 1997; Walker, Kogut & Shan, 1997) have devoted considerable
energy towards exploring the diverse structures and strategies related to
brokerage across structural holes. The essential finding from this body of
research is that the tertius gains
power by serving as a bridge between two non-redundant parties, brokering
information and resources and playing the two parties against one another.

The
tertius does not operate in a vacuum,
however. There is another important structural position influencing the
opportunities for exploitation of structural holes. Burt (1992) warns that “transactions
are always embedded in a broader relationship of some kind” (p. 234).
Consequently, he emphasizes the role of the “fifth player,” a regulatory node
that “sets relationship expectations and outer limits” (p. 235) for the entire
network.Because the structural holes are embedded in regulatory
environments created by fifth players, the tertii’s
opportunities for exploitation are constrained. Thus, regardless of the
apparent power benefits afforded by a network rich in structural holes, brokers
only have the freedom to operate within the “may-must-can-cannot rules” (p.
235) created by fifth players.

It
is easy to see why Burt’s theory of structural holes has many applications with
regards to communication policy. Information has become an ever more vital
resource for survival and success in this social epoch. In the words of McNeill
and McNeill (2003), “at present, human society is one huge web of cooperation
and competition, sustained by massive flows of information and energy” (p.
322). Similarly, scholars from Castells (2000) to Bell (1999) to Giddens (1990)
have theorized massive social change based on the reorganization and
acceleration of information flows and the increasingly central role information
plays as a form (if not the primary form) of capital.

Consequently,
the power of the tertius, or information broker, has increased
commensurately with these changes. Like any form of capital, information is
distributed unevenly throughout our society, creating structural
nonredundancies between different individuals and institutions (for instance,
between the government and its citizens, between a corporation and its
shareholders, or between researchers and the public). The gaps between these
nonredundant nodes in the network are often filled by specialized organizations
playing the role of the tertius – in other words, media organizations.

The
tertius role of media organizations can be observed in much of the media
studies literature, despite the absence of explicit network analysis. Such
literature often refers to the role the media may play as either “gatekeepers”
(Fang, 1997; Lopes, 1992; Low, 2000) or “bottlenecks” (Bar & Sandvig, 2000;
DiCola & Thomson, 2002). These metaphors, which suggest a power dynamic
based on brokerage, also appear in network theory literature on structural
holes (Burt, 1992; Corra & Willer, 2002; Waguespack & Fleming, 2004).

Media
organizations can also serve as brokers between other media organizations and
the public, as when a newspaper publishes a syndicated article, or when a cable
company with a programming division distributes programming from rival
organizations. The strategic value of brokering such relationships has led to a
market environment in which media organizations are vertically integrating –
acquiring and linking business units throughout the information supply and
distribution chain. This can be directly understood as a tertius
strategy. As McChesney (2004) observes, “Vertical integration is a powerful
stimulant to concentration; once a few firms in an industry move in this
direction, others must follow suit or they can find themselves at an
insurmountable disadvantage – possibly blocked at all turns by opposing gatekeepers”
(p. 180, italics added). As a result of this process, the media industry
becomes increasingly consolidated in the hands of a few organizations, thus
increasing the network centrality of these organizations, and boosting their
social power as brokers of information.

Consequently,
in order to mitigate the power of media organizations as tertius nodes
in the social information network, the government must constantly act as a
fifth player, artificially constraining the capacity of these organizations to
exploit their structural roles. In practical terms, this means limiting the
ability of such firms to integrate vertically and horizontally, setting and
enforcing standards for the diversity of media content (such as the range of
political viewpoints represented), and providing a conduit for the public to
express their satisfaction, dissatisfaction, needs and desires with regards to
the media.

In
each of these respects, the FCC has increasingly failed to mitigate the tertius
power of media organizations over the past few decades. As scholars like
McChesney (2004) and Bagdikian (2004) have shown, the regulatory organization
has recently used its role as fifth player to increase, rather than decrease,
their power. Restrictions on media outlet ownership caps and cross-media
ownership have been rolled back drastically (especially in the case of the 1996
Telecommunications Act). Controls on viewpoint diversity, represented by the
FCC’s “Fairness Doctrine,” were repealed in 1987. And the license renewal
process for television and radio broadcasters, which is supposed to reflect
public interest and incorporate public feedback, has recently (2003) been
characterized as a “farce” by FCC member Michael Copps (McChesney, 2004, p.
44).

The end result of
these policies has arguably been the greatest consolidation of tertius power
over information flow in the history of our republic, at a time when
information has reached its zenith as a social currency. I would argue that
network analysis – specifically structural hole theory – is a valuable tool to demonstrate this fact
and to support an argument for a change in regulatory regime that would reverse
the trend and initiate a more democratic information economy.

As a parting
thought, I would hasten to add that sometimes ill-conceived communication
regulation can be at least as damaging as no regulation at all. In recent
research (Sinnreich & Monge, 2004), I have shown that “payola” laws
restricting the financial dealings of record labels and radio stations have
created an “enforced structural hole” in the music industry network,
unintentionally guaranteeing the emergence and maintaining the strength of a
very powerful class of tertius organizations known as independent
promoters. Thus, the role of the government as a “fifth player” in the
information network amounts to more than simply choosing whether and what to regulate
– it requires both vigilance and subtlety, the willingness to explore the
ramifications of every regulatory decision, and to change those decisions when
necessary. Network analysis and structural hole theory could play a vital role
in this process.

3. Knowledge Networks and
Transactive Memory

The
final network theory I’d like to address is the theory of knowledge networks
and transactive memory. Although I have far less experience with this theory
than I do with the other two, I believe it holds great promise as an
intellectual framework for understanding issues of social inequality in an
information society, and may point to solutions for addressing these inequities
through communication policy.

A
knowledge network (as its name would suggest) can be understood as a set of
relations between nodes possessing knowledge of one kind or another – for
instance, work skills, domain expertise, or strategically valuable information
(Monge & Contractor, 2003). These nodes may singular or organizational, human
or non-human (e.g. experts, computer files, libraries, university departments).
It is useful in considering these networks to recall Bell’s (1999) distinction
between simple data, information and knowledge. Information, in his schema, is
contextualized data, while knowledge represents information that can be applied
to practice. Similarly, Castells (2000) contrasts skills, which are static and
unchanging (e.g. replacing a flat tire), to knowledge, which is flexible and
broadly applicable (e.g. understanding how a car works). Although such
distinctions may seem like hair-splitting, it is important to understand that
knowledge is something that can be applied rather than simply acquired.

According
to transactive memory theory, no member of a knowledge network can possibly
know with certainty which pieces of knowledge are stored by which nodes, and
what the structure of relations between those nodes is (one can imagine a story
by Jorge Luis Borges exploring the epistemological ramifications of this dilemma).
Consequently, each node in the network possesses a cognitive knowledge
network ­– a unique (and incomplete) understanding of the knowledge
network’s dimensions and his own relation to it.

This
brings us, finally, to the idea of transactive memory – a process whereby nodes
in a knowledge network use their personal cognitive knowledge networks to
“facilitate the flows of knowledge among actors within the network, thereby
reducing the need for each actor to possess skills or expertise available
elsewhere in the knowledge network” (Monge & Contractor, 2003, p. 199). In
other words, transactive memory represents a negotiated division of
intellectual labor that sacrifices comprehensive (or heterogeneous) knowledge
by any single node for network-wide efficiency and maximized knowledge storage
and retrievability.

The
theory of transactive memory is commonly applied to working relationships, such
as co-workers in an office or spouses in a marriage. Thus, I remember where my
wife’s glasses are and she remembers what happened to the twenty dollar bill I
had in my wallet yesterday. However, I believe the theory can also be applied
to society(ies) as a whole, and to the emergent patterns of social inequality
that both cause and result from the differential levels of access to knowledge.

Bell
(1999), Castells (2000), and Giddens (1990) have all devoted significant
quantities of ink to the changes society has undergone and continues to undergo
as a result of the growth of a global communication network infrastructure (I
referred to these arguments earlier in reference to the growing power of media
organizations). Each of these theorists would agree that knowledge plays an
increasingly vital role in shaping economic and political power. For instance,
Bell argues that Marx’s “labor theory of value” no longer applies to our
information economy, positing instead a “knowledge theory of value” (p. xvii)
in which knowledge supplants labor and capital as the fundamental building
block of commerce.

Although
Bell (1999) contrasts capital (a scarce and dwindling resource) to knowledge (a
renewable and accretive resource), the rising tide of the knowledge economy
doesn’t necessarily float all boats. In fact, transactive memory systems, bydefinition, represent differential knowledge distribution, and this
differential is only increased by the presence of an electronic communication
infrastructure within the knowledge network. In the words of Monge and
Contractor (2003), “communication networks influence the degree of knowledge
differentiation among members [of transactive memory systems] and the accuracy
of their cognitive knowledge networks” (p. 203).

In
other words, as our society becomes increasingly mediated and globalized, and
as knowledge becomes increasingly valuable as a form of social, economic and
political capital, the members of society are becoming increasingly
differentiated in the distribution of knowledge. This means that each node has
access to less vital knowledge within his own experience and that of the people
closest to him, and that he must rely increasingly on his cognitive
knowledge network – mediated by the global communication infrastructure –
to gain access to the resources that are vital to his survival and success.

This, in turn, has
social implications. Small differences in a person’s capacity to access the
mechanisms of transactive memory (such as computer skills) or added links in
the social chain separating a person from the knowledge he needs, can
drastically reduce his power and competitiveness relative to other members of
society. And as the knowledge gap hypothesis explains (Gaziano & Gaziano,
1999; Rogers, 2000, 2003; Tichenor, Donohue & Olien, 1970), the people most
likely to lack these skills and social connections are exactly those who
lack social power in the first place – i.e. economically and politically
disadvantaged groups such as racial minorities, rural communities and the
elderly. Thus, the growing knowledge economy spurs a recursive process in which
disenfranchised people become ever more disenfranchised in a continuing and
self-feeding cycle.

This trend is
exacerbated by an added tangle: as knowledge networks grow to exceed the size
of a community, the mechanisms by which transactive memory is achieved
increasingly rely on superficial judgments rather than first-hand experience.
As Monge and Contractor (2003) explain, fundamental processes such as expertise
recognition, retrieval coordination, directory updating and information
allocation, to an increasing degree, “may be based on stereotypes of what
others ‘should’ know” (p. 199) rather than what people actually know. Another
way to put this is that, as the size of a knowledge network grows, people’s
cognitive knowledge networks become less reliable, and more prone to snap
judgments based on stereotype. It is easy to see that this, too, leads to a
recursive process in which people already excluded from the network
relationships and expertise vital to their success are increasingly subject to
such exclusion over time.

From a policy
standpoint, I can think of no quick-and-dirty silver bullet to solve these
problems. The trends toward globalization and the growth of the knowledge
economy are unlikely to reverse, and the structural dynamics of knowledge
networks are unlikely to change. However, an understanding of knowledge
networks and transactive memory may help regulatory bodies and other
organizations to mitigate the effects of these trends by more accurately
measuring the gaps in the global knowledge network and staging
intelligently-planned interventions at both the social and the infrastructural
level. If we can take advantage of network theory (such as the “small-world
hypothesis” [Watts, 1999]) to intervene by shortening the diameter of knowledge
networks, and influence the messages carried by the mass media to lessen or
remove the social stigmas associated with racial and other stereotypes, then we
will have made significant strides in the right direction.

Sinnreich,
A. & Monge, P. M. (2004). The role of enforced structural holes in
independent radio promotion. Presented at the annual conference of the
International Communication Association, New Orleans, 2004.

2005.04.08

Many cultural studies scholars
have focused on music as a particular kind of cultural form through which cultural
flows, bricolage, pastiche, incorporation, and cross cultural and cross ethnic
appropriations are accomplished. Examine and distinguish the arguments
these scholars have made about music, and make an argument of your own for why
music can be distinguished for other cultural forms (or not) at the level of
cultural innovation and global cultural migrations.

Music
is sticky stuff. Ideas, values and attitudes have a tendency to cling to it,
coloring our phenomenological experience of it with a broad symbolic palate.
Music’s stickiness also allows the ideas that cling to it to travel where it
travels, change as it changes, and to collide and merge with other ideas when
music does the same. From a cultural perspective, this means that music is
often central to the construction of identity and to the process of social
change. From a scholarly perspective, this means that music often serves as a
perfect example for whichever social theory an author happens to espouse. In
other words, cultural studies literature contains as many different
theorizations of music as there are theories of culture.

However, from this
multiplicity of viewpoints, a few dominant questions emerge: Does music serve
hegemonic power, or act as a conduit of resistance? Does music precede social
change, or reflect it? How does the historical role of music change in an era
of mass media? Is music’s meaning a product of its generative structures, the
intent of its producers, an inherent quality of its form, or something produced
through the act of listening? Although an exhaustive review of the answers
theorists have posed to these questions could easily fill a (very interesting)
book, I will attempt in this paper to outline the debates in broad
brushstrokes.

Adorno
(2002) is among the first cultural studies scholars to actively take on music
as a subject of analysis. His groundbreaking (and much-maligned) essay ‘On
Popular Music’ is primarily concerned with distinguishing between “popular” and
“serious” music, and the opposing roles these two cultural forms take in
shaping society. Theoretically, the essay is an extension of the ideas
expressed in Adorno and Horkheimer’s (1972) The Dialectic of the
Enlightenment, which serves as something of a manifesto for the Frankfurt
School of cultural studies. In this book, Adorno and Horkheimer argue that mass
production, communication media and the “absolute power of capitalism” (p. 120)
have combined in the form of the “culture industry” to produce a symbolic
environment they refer to as “mass culture.”

The problem with
mass culture, according to Adorno and Horkheimer (1972), is that, by
systematizing and “pre-chewing” cultural information, the culture industry
inculcates a form of passivity among its audience (the lower classes), who are
then brainwashed and made the dupes of the powerful elite. This process, they
argue, is tantamount to – or, at the very least, opens the door to – political
fascism.

For
Adorno (2002), the machinery of this process can be gleaned by comparing the
aesthetic principles of popular music to those of serious music. Popular music,
he argues, is repetitious, infantile, and interchangeable – much like any
commodity created by mass production processes. These qualities undermine a
listener’s agency by depriving him of the opportunity (and, ultimately, the
ability) to interpret musical information for himself. As a result, the
listener is forced into “a system of response mechanisms wholly antagonistic to
the ideal of individuality in a free, liberal society” (p. 422).

Serious music, by
contrast, is self-contained, teleological and unique. The listener can only
access its meaning dialectically, by engaging with the music on its own terms,
and on its own time. This active engagement, in turn, encourages individuality
and agency in the listener, which produces a self-aware, critical and
politically self-reliant society. Adorno apparently never considers the logical
impossibility of this argument: how can a listener be compelled to be
free? If the music and the media have absolute power to shape the minds of
their audience, then there can be no appreciable difference in liberty or
individuality between a popular music listener and a serious music listener.

Benjamin (1968) provides one of the most potent
arguments against Adorno (2002), although he does not address music as a
subject distinct from other “art.” He agrees with Adorno that mass production,
and the reproducibility of aesthetic information, profoundly change the role
that arts play in society. Reproducibility, he argues, destroys the “aura” of
artworks as unique and irreplaceable objects, invaluable outpourings of
creative genius. However, Benjamin sees this as a good thing. “For the first
time in world history,” he writes, “mechanical reproduction emancipates the
work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. . . . Instead of being
based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics.” (p.
224).

In other words,
mechanical reproduction frees the audience for art (and music) from the
constraints of the hierarchical, elitist “art-for-art’s-sake” model of meaning
production, and opens up a discursive field in which the power to create
meaning is far more decentralized, contentious, and transient. In this context,
art gains a new political functionality. As we shall see in our later
discussion of the Birmingham school, Benjamin’s (1968) point of view is
brilliantly ahead of its time.

More
recent scholars have directly confronted Adorno (2002), seeking both to
illuminate the holes in his argument and to reclaim what is valuable in it.
Paddison (1982), for example, argues that Adorno is correct in distinguishing
between music that is inherently critical (thus allowing resistance) and
inherently uncritical (thus compelling passivity). However, Paddison faults Adorno
for failing to distinguish between the critical/uncritical binary and the
serious/popular binary. If Adorno weren’t blinded by his own “irrational
prejudices” (p. 208) against popular music, Paddison argues, he would have
recognized that any genre of music may contain both critical and uncritical
works.

Paddison (1982)
looks to Adorno’s writings on art (e.g. Minima Moralia) to show that his
theories allow for the possibility of resistant music distributed via the mass
media. Resistance may be achieved, According to Adorno, by drawing on aesthetic
“left-overs” and recontextualizing them in a critical way. Although Paddison
doesn’t explicitly make this connection, it may be argued that hip-hop,
mash-ups, and other forms of musical bricolage fit this bill to a tee. However,
Paddison agrees with Adorno that structural forces may have the capacity to
trump even the most resistant aesthetic processes: “increasingly sophisticated
mechanisms of marketing and distribution make it ever more difficult for any
music – whether serious or popular, traditional or avant-garde, Western or
non-Western – to resist its fate as a commodity” (p. 217).

All of the
theorists I have discussed thus far are primarily concerned with the interplay
between structural and agentic power among music audiences. However,
some theorists would argue that the very notion of an audience as a separate
class of individual from musical performers is itself the product of a systemic
disequilibrium between structural and agentic forces. Barthes (1977), for
example, distinguishes between music made to be played and music made to
be listened to. The function of technically challenging and
theoretically dense music such as Beethoven, he argues, is to render amateurs
incapable of playing music for themselves – not necessarily because they lack
the physical skill, but because they lack the aesthetic code and the material
resources.

According to
Barthes (1977), Beethoven wrote fundamentally orchestral music that demanded a
conductor, which thus could not be translated into the context of the popular
(amateur) musical praxis of his time – e.g. small-group ensembles or soloists.
In other words, Beethoven’s aesthetic contains structural
imperatives privileging social dynamics such as hierarchy, mechanistic organization,
and professionalism. Seen through this lens, it is impossible to view the
elevation and dominance of Beethoven’s aesthetic separately from the rise of
industrialized society, and from the social reorganization that accompanied it.
The end results of this aesthetic-structural shift, according to Barthes, are
very similar to the effects Adorno (2002) attributed to popular music: the
professional musician becomes a “technician, who relieves the listener of all
activity, even by procuration, and abolishes in the sphere of music the very
notion of doing.” (p. 150, emphasis in original).

Attali (1985)
makes some arguments similar to Barthes’ (1977), although he posits a more
cyclical and complex relationship between structural and aesthetic codes. Like Barthes,
Attali views the separation of musical production and consumption warily, and
interprets the rupture as a function of the demands made by structural forces.
For Attali, musical expression is a form of collective social imagination, and
changes in musical aesthetic codes thus presage social or organizational
change, the one sowing the seeds for the other. In his words, “all music, any
organization of sounds is . . . a tool for the creation or consolidation of a
community” (p. 6).

Because of its
capacity to spur social change, Attali (1985) argues, music is inherently
resistant, and poses a constant threat to power. Thus, vested powers have
historically attempted to channel and control the production and distribution
of musical information. It is through this lens that Attali interprets the
gradual professionalization of (European) musicians, which he traces to the
fourteenth century enclosure of musical production within the feudal courts.
Although music had previously been integrated into daily existence and
practiced by nearly every member of society, Attali writes that at this point
“musicians became professionals bound to a single master, domestics,
producers of spectacles exclusively reserved for a minority” (p. 15, emphasis
in original).

This distancing
between consumers and producers was made complete, Attali (1985) argues, in the
age of capitalism and mass production. Today, he writes, the musician/consumer dialectic both reflects
and reproduces the central division of labor at the heart of the capitalist
system. However, unlike Adorno (2002), Attali sees a light at the end of the
tunnel; beyond the “repetition” that marks industrial society, he sees a new
model of musical practice, which he calls “composition.” In this nascent model
of musical and social organization, power over the distribution of aesthetic
codes becomes decentralized, leading to a utopian rupture, “transforming the
world into an art form and life into a shifting pleasure” (p. 147). Although I
think this model, like all utopian visions, can be more usefully understood as
a vector of change than as a destination, I think it is a valuable framework
within which to understand the changes characterizing musical culture today
(e.g. peer-to-peer music distribution, online collaboration and performance).

Frith (1996), like
Attali (1985), views the historical professionalization of music as a function
of social control. He shares Attali’s view that music communicates
possibilities for social change through aesthetic means, and thus, poses a
threat to entrenched power. In his words, “music gives us a real experience of
what the ideal could be” (p. 274). Unlike Attali, however, he views the
producer/consumer binary primarily as a map for high/low cultural
distinctions (such as those espoused by Adorno [2002]), which in turn map onto
social hierarchies, such as race and class. This relationship is, in his model,
bi-directional: “pop tastes do not just derive from our socially constructed
identities; they also help to shape them” (p. 276). Also unlike Attali, Frith
acknowledges that despite the power of these codified aesthetic boundaries,
many (if not most) people have historically transcended them in one way or
another. Thus, he does not need to resort to Attali’s utopian hopes for the future
– instead, he identifies the possibility of agency and self-determination
today, within the existing system.

If Frith (1996)
owes much of his musical-social model to Attali (1985), he owes just as much to
Bourdieu (1984). For Bourdieu, musical taste (like any other taste, from food
to film to fashion) is produced and organized through a complex web of social
and institutional relations called “the habitus” and artificially normalized to
the point where personal taste appears to be innate, rather than socially
acquired. This process of taste-production serves one primary function: to
establish and legitimate class distinctions. In his oft-quoted words, “taste
classifies, and it classifies the classifier” (p. 6).

According to
Bourdieu (1984), taste-based class distinctions are not simply reflected in
generic preferences (e.g. opera vs. country & western), but also in the
very attitude one brings to aesthetic experience. High art, which
reflects and constitutes the tastes of the upper class, demands a different
mode of engagement (which Bourdieu refers to as the “aesthetic disposition”)
than lowbrow or middlebrow culture. In Bourdieu’s words, “Intellectuals could
be said to believe in the representation – literature, theatre, painting – more
than in the things represented, whereas the people chiefly expect
representations and the conventions which govern them to allow them to believe
‘naively’ in the things represented” (p. 5).

This aesthetic
distancing from the subject of representation, Bourdieu (1984) argues, is the
point and the sole meaning of high art (at least since the nineteenth century).
It produces a commensurate distance between the individual and the world at
large – a distance which is both the luxury of an elite class without material
concerns and the necessary attitude of a ruling class sustained by the
exploitation of others. Frith (1996) quibbles with Bourdieu on this point,
arguing that Bourdieu’s understanding of art’s meaning misses the communicative
aspects that make art art, or music music. Distinction doesn’t
necessarily need to be hierarchical, Frith argues; for instance, two people can
build a friendship on a common love for Miles Davis or Britney Spears. Thus, he
argues, a full understanding of music’s social role would have to include both
its representational and its semiotic content.

Nearly all of the
theorists I have reviewed at this point – from Adorno (2002) to Barthes (1977)
to Attali (1985) to Bourdieu (1984) – would agree that the meaning of music is
related, to a greater or lesser degree, with the structural forces that shaped
its production, and that this meaning can be understood simply by conducting
structural and formal analysis. However, the Birmingham school and its
followers – Hall (1996a; 1996b), Hebdige (1979; 1987) and Morley (2000), for
example – would ascribe a larger role to audience reception in the production
of musical meaning.

Rather than
describing the ways in which music “effects” listeners, these theorists take a
deeper interest in exploring the ways in which people “use” music strategically
to achieve their social and political ambitions, from identity construction to
political message dissemination to social intervention. Hall (1996a) sets the
tone for much of this research, arguing for a model of constrained agency, in
which music listeners (and producers) have a degree of power over the
production of meaning, but are also limited by the “net of constraints, the
‘conditions of existence’ for practical thought and calculation about society”
(p. 44) that surround them.

Despite these
limitations, Hall (1996b) feels that the cultural arena is an essential site of
resistance for disempowered groups or individuals. The decentring of global
power following the collapse of European hegemony, he argues, “opens up new
spaces of contestation . . . thus presenting us with a strategic and important
opportunity for intervention in the popular cultural field” (p. 466).

According to Hall
(1996b), this combination of constraint and agency, subjugation and
opportunity, can be witnessed in the centrality of music to black popular
culture. Strategically prevented for many years from competing for power in the
field of linguistic discourse, blacks focused on music as an alternative mode
of expression and opportunity for cultural dominance. This was achieved, Hall
argues, only through the costly exercise of “strategic essentialism,” the
aesthetic codification of blackness. This strategy successfully created
discursive power for blacks as a social group, but ultimately undermined the
power of individual blacks by shackling their individual identities to the
group identity and offering support for racist ideologies based on essentialist
beliefs. Hall questions whether such strategic essentialism is still a valuable
tactic, arguing that “it is to the diversity, not the homogeneity, of black
experience that we must now give our undivided creative attention” (p. 473).

Hebdige (1987)
uses this theoretical framework to explore the rise and spread of reggae as an
aesthetic vehicle for grassroots news dissemination, social imagination, and
identity construction. Like Hall (1996b), he views cultural expression as an
opportunity for social intervention, and music as a site for power
confrontations: “the important issues for the [recording] artist have less to
do with staying ‘honest’ and ‘authentic’ and refusing to ‘sell out’ than with
grabbing and retaining control of the product at every stage and in all its
forms” (p. 107).

Like Attali (1985)
and Barthes (1977), Hebdige (1987) believes that social ideas can be coded into
musical aesthetic information. However, like Hall (1996a; 1996b) and Gross
(1995), he emphasizes the importance of communities of shared meaning and
shared practice in the transmission of these ideas. One aesthetic strategy Hebdige
makes much of is “versioning,” the Jamaican term for innovation based on the
musical commons (e.g. adding new vocals to a hit record). Hebdige uses it as a
blanket term to represent the spirit of pastiche at the heart of all
Afro-diasporic musics. Versioning, he argues, is “a democratic principle
because it implies that no one has the final say” (p. 14). In other words,
meanings are endlessly recreated and reinterpreted as aesthetic information
travels and morphs throughout culture.

Hebdige (1987) traces
the voyage of the musical pastiche “cut ‘n’ mix attitude” (p. 141) from a
localized Jamaican cultural strategy to New York City, where it became the
genesis of hip-hop, a musical form that has now achieved a degree of global
cultural dominance. “When taken to its logical conclusion in rap,” he argues,
“cut ‘n’ mix suggests that we shouldn’t be so concerned about where a sound
comes from. It’s there for everyone to use. And every time a new connection is
made between different kinds of music, a new channel of communication opens up”
(p. 146).

This strategy of
forging cultural alliances by blending aesthetic codes typifies the kind of
“anti-essentialist” intervention recommended by Hall (1996b), Frith (1996) and
Lipsitz (1994), and described by Rose (1994) and Neal (1999) with regards to
hip-hop and in my own research (Sinnreich, 2004) with regards to mash-ups.
Ultimately, these theorists argue, such temporary alliances between
strategically defined social groups, enacted through music but geared toward social
change, can be an engine of aesthetic innovation, a source of political power,
and an important generator of shared meanings in the field of popular music.

For many of the
theorists I have discussed, music is largely interchangeable with other cultural
forms. For Adorno (2002), popular music is simply one of the many soulless
products of the culture industry. For Bourdieu (1984), music functions no
differently as a marker of social class than do literature or sports. For Hall
(1996b), music is simply one of many cultural forms in which disparate groups
and individuals may struggle for power. Personally, I tend to disagree with
these viewpoints, and side with scholars such as Attali (1985), Frith (1996)
and Hebdige (1987), who see music as a unique form of human communication.

One of music’s
most important and unique qualities is so obvious, it seems almost trite to
mention: it is invisible. Yet, it makes a world of difference. In our
ocularcentric culture, which prizes the eyes over the ears (McCann, 2002; Ong,
1982), this invisibility gives musical information the stealth and power of a
secret agent, doing its work while hiding in plain sight. Another, similar
aspect of music is that (lyrics notwithstanding), it is a prelinguistic form of
communication. Hall (1996b) regards this as a form of inferiority, viewing
music as a second-rate booby prize for a political bloc barred from linguistic
discourse. But, like its invisibility, music’s prelinguistic quality may be
also seen as a source of (hidden) strength. It’s very difficult to censor
social ideas expressed musically, because it’s nearly impossible to ascribe a
literal meaning to it. And even the most rigidly codified meanings (e.g. the
linguistic referents of African talking drum patterns, or the religious
implications of Baroque harmonies) can be lost entirely once the musical
information is disembedded from its original cultural context and imported into
a new one (e.g. a “world music” or “classical” radio format).

There are other
points on which my own theoretical understanding of music as a social force
diverges from and builds upon the readings I have reviewed here. For instance,
I am attracted to Attali’s (1985) and Bourdieu’s (1984) political economic
treatment of music as a form of “capital,” but I don’t think either of them got
the whole story. Attali focuses on music’s capacity to spur social change.
Bourdieu focuses on musical knowledge as a form of “cultural capital” that can
act as a mark of power. But I think there is another, more elemental quality to
music that underlies both of these qualities – namely, its operation at the
levels of cognition and psychology. To me, the nervous system (and the
“consciousness” that emerges from it) is a very useful bottom line from which
to discuss other levels of human activity and experience. From this
perspective, music can be understood as neither political capital nor cultural
capital, but cognitive capital. I’m fully aware that there’s no
objective “bottom line” for the human condition (someone with a physics
background could theoretically argue for “quantum capital”), but I find this a
practical framework for both qualitative and quantitative analysis.

A final, related
issue that I find lacking in most of the literature is an acknowledgment of
music as a phenomenological, or somatic, experience. Music isn’t just an
abstract form of information that can be communicated independently of its
medium (such as quantitative data or raw text) – it’s an event, something that happens
to you physically. Most cultural theory avoids this perspective
because it is messy – it’s impossible to capture via any known methodology (I
am confident that FMRI tells us no more than ethnography can about people’s
physical experiences of music), and it suggests a material determinism and
physical essentialism that are anathema to contemporary modes of thought.

Yet, it would also
be foolish to continue to ignore this aspect of musical communication. A
perfect fifth interval sounds meaningful to people in every culture because the
rudimentary mathematical relationship of 2:1 operates uniquely on our ears and
our aural/perceptive structures. Similarly, a sound repeated at regular
intervals feels rhythmic to us because our perception of time is
inherently somatic and our lives are dictated by (dare I say circadian?)
rhythms. This doesn’t mean that a perfect fifth or a 4/4 time cycle means the
same thing in every culture or to every person – obviously, they don’t – but
they are universally recognizable as having the capacity to carry meaning,
because of their fundamentally distinctive phenomenological qualities.

Clearly, I have
not (yet) assembled a grand unifying theory of music and society, and even if I
had, I wouldn’t have the space or the time to discuss it in any detail here.
But these are the bare bones of my current model as it stands: music as a
physical event, bearing a cognitive capital, subject to the imposition of power
and offering the capacity for resistance as it travels in the interpersonal
communicative and symbolic space we call culture.

just received the questions 10 minutes ago. challenging stuff, but i think i can hammer out something halfway coherent over the next 9 days...

Quals Questions for Aram Sinnreich

April 8, 2005

Cultural Studies [Sturken]:
[one of the following]

David Morley
writes that the challenge of scholarship in cultural studies is how to theorize
the material and this discursive together, and the economic and the cultural
together. What does Morley mean by this? How will you address this
challenge in your own research?

Many cultural
studies scholars have focused on music as a particular kind of cultural form
through which cultural flows, bricolage, pastiche, incorporation, and cross
cultural and cross ethnic appropriations are accomplished. Examine and
distinguish the arguments these scholars have made about music, and make an
argument of your own for why music can be distinguished for other cultural forms
(or not) at the level of cultural innovation and global cultural migrations.

What does it mean
for a scholar such as Raymond Williams to argue that "culture is
ordinary"? What is the genealogy of the concept of the ordinary and
the everyday in cultural studies? Why is an emphasis on the ordinary
important to the origins of British cultural studies, and what does such a
concept mean in the context of US-based work in cultural studies?

Network Society and Communication Policy [Bar & Monge]:

Pick three network
theories which have relevance for communication policy, justifying your
selection. Briefly explicate the core assertions of the theories
and explain why you think they are interesting. Compare the
implications of these theories for selected communication policies. Do
these policies take full advantage of the theoretical insights? If not,
what would be the benefits and the drawbacks if current policies were
changed to conform to the theories?

Art, Communication and Aesthetic Theory [Gross]:

Adorno and Thomas Frank worry about the
commercial increasingly impinging on the space of the public sphere. The music industry increasingly worries about
their commercial music being treated as a public good (p2p, etc). Maybe
a bigger framework would suggest not that either is impinging on the other, but
that the categories are becoming less relevant. After all, commerce is simply a specialized form of social
interaction. If we believe Bourdieu
that there are other forms of capital (social, cultural), then we can
understand new communication media and the resulting social practices as
forming the foundation for a society in which every kind of capital is
transacted like commodities -- or vice versa, where commodities are
undifferentiated from other forms of social relations. How would such a development, or way of
thinking, relate to traditional ways of thinking about the arts [traditional at
least in the West since the 18th century or so]? Discuss. awful nice of larry to throw me this bone. he is almost quoting verbatim an email i sent him a few weeks back. hardly a softball question, though. it's a lot easier to posit something like this in a 2-paragraph email than to support it in a 15-page paper.

Musicology [Demers]:

[ONE OF THE FOLLOWING]

Question 1:

In Roland Barthes’ Image-Music-Text,
he argues that “under the pressure of the mass long-playing record, there seems
to be a flattening out of technique.” (189) Explain what Barthes means
by “flattening out of technique.” Is he
repeating Adorno’s critique of mass produced music, or is there room in
Barthes’ cosmology for music that is produced in a standardized fashion but
that nonetheless contains the potential for meaning? Finally, is Barthes right?: given home studios and the democratization
of music making, can we really speak of a flattening out of technique?

Question 2:

Theodore Gracyk is just one of numerous critics to theorize on the
relationship between recordings and “music itself” (however it is
defined). Explain Gracyk's defense of
the recording as the definitive objet
d’art of rock music. Then, propose
your own theory on the relationship(s) between recordings and live performances
in the light of remix culture.

Question 3:

Song lyrics are generally easy to decipher, but how much (or how little)
does the music tell us? Discuss various methodologies used to unpack
the non-verbal elements of music. In
particular, look at how these strategies attempt to articulate issues of
gender/sexuality, race and ethnicity, technology, etc. How successful are these strategies?